Friday, July 30, 2010

The inspiration for my recent making-bacon-at-home fascination comes from this "My BLT From Scratch" post on Michael Ruhlman's blog. Last summer Ruhlman challenged his readers to create and submit their own interpretations of a completely homemade BTL. This included baking the bread, making the mayo, preferably growing the lettuce and tomatoes, and of course, making the bacon.

No ingredient makes people lose their minds like bacon, so let me be clear right from the start, this is not technically "bacon," so save the "this is not technically bacon" emails. My only goal here was to establish a homemade bacon baseline. Instead of trying to paint a masterpiece on my first attempt, I thought I'd start with a simple charcoal sketch.The technique shown herein is very straightforward, and could be easily mimicked by anyone able to get their hands on pork belly. The idea was to rub the meat with smoked paprika, salt and cracked black pepper, before slowly roasting until tender. After an overnight chill, the belly would be sliced and fried crisp.For a first attempt, I was very happy with the results. The texture produced by this approach was very bacon-like, although I sliced it too thick for it to get truly "crisp." Above and beyond textural considerations, it needed more salt. Next time I'd be much more aggressive during the dry rub application.

Stay tuned for upcoming versions, which will include brining, curing, and some kind of smoking. In addition to better flavor and texture, these future attempts will also be much more exciting as we substantially increase the odds for some type of serious food borne illness.

By the way, since this wasn't "real" bacon, I decided to show it as humble breakfast meat, and not displayed in its most glorious form, the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. Enjoy!

Sigh! Thanks, Chef, for sharing this experiment with us! I cannot wait for part two. We did house-cured/smoked bacon in a Catering & Buffets class at LCB & it was... exceedingly awesome! :) I'm looking forward to seeing the progression of videos on this delicious topic.

I'm amazed how porc belly seems to be such a "chic" dish in the US.We're I'm from (the Netherlands) you could just get porc belly sliced thick without the rind in the meat section of the supermarket. People just use salt and pepper (nothing fancy AND just a normal pinch of salt) and sautee (sorry if my spelling isn't perfect:-)) them slowly in a skillet for about 20 minutes and we eat them with "stampot" that's mashed potatoes with any greens.Delicious and cheap!Now I live in the US I have to order them seperately at a butcher and they look at me like I'm trying to be some NY chef....so I get them now at the Asian supermarket.Just wanted to share there's no need for baking porc belly hours and hours....btw, marinate them in your favorite herbs and spices and throw them on the BBQ, curry or ketjap manis (not soy sauce) are great ideas!Enjoy!Dorothea (Ohio)P.S. The Dutch word for porc belly slices are "speklapjes"....:-)